Full extent of Kevin Sinfield injury as physio reveals severe muscle tear

Kevin Sinfield completed his ‘Running Home for Christmas’ charity challenge while suffering with a severe muscle injury, physio Dave O’Sullivan has revealed. Sinfield brought an end to his seven-day challenge on Saturday after running 50km a day with the aim of raising funds for Motor Neurone Disease charities.

The former Leeds Rhinos man has been running in seven different regions across the country, starting in Liverpool before taking in stops in the south west, Northern Ireland, Scotland, East Yorkshire, the East Midlands and finally Manchester, with the challenge being completed in Saddleworth.

Sinfield set out with the target of raising £777,777, but he has now smashed that total, with donations totalling £1,070,333.44 at the time of writing.

Running such a distance in the space of the week is a superhuman feat in itself, but it has now been revealed that he has completed the full challenge with a muscle tear.

Speaking during Sinfield’s final day on the road, O’Sullivan revealed the current England Rugby skills coach picking up the injury just a few days before the challenge started and has been running through the pain of the injury.

“You can see here now as he’s running that he’s really dragging one of his legs,” O’Sullivan told the BBC. “I won’t say which legs but it’ll be pretty obvious.

“It was about 10 days before he started, he picked up an injury running onto Twickenham with England. We’ve had a scan, we’ve had three different opinions and unfortunately he tore one of the biggest muscles for running and there’s a few other injuries in there as well.

“We’ve had a lot of support and he’s had an injection to try and speed up the healing of the muscle and he’s needed a few other interventions as well. He’s done really well. He’s getting a lot of back pain now because of compensations and things like that but he’s just getting through it now and doing his best as he always does.

“The grade of muscle tear that he’s got, you shouldn’t be running on it, I’ll put it that way. To do seven ultra marathons in seven days is pretty incredible. This is the first year that we’ve had to say to him there’s a high chance you might not be able to get through this.

“The first 7km we were worried to be honest with you, but the fact that he got through the first day our confidence grew. The muscle is holding up but he’s getting a lot of back pain on that particular side.”

Kevin Sinfield may have completed his challenge, but you can still donate to the cause here.